‘Anyone who doesn’t have an hour on the pandemic is a fucking psychopath,’ claims Nick Helm at the start of What Have We Become?. It’s a reasonable summation of his latest show, which grapples with lockdown, Partygate, Tiger King, the Oscars slap and any other popular event that’s hit headlines since 2020. Peppered throughout Helm’s topical material are more personal talking points, including the relationship he has with his parents, his soft-drink addiction and the arrival of his first niece (that’s right, he’s a real uncle now).

 Setting these well-trodden topics alight is Helm’s rage-fuelled persona and knack for hyperbole, which can turn even the most banal observations on Hello Fresh subscription boxes into a full-throated rant. Yet even finely tuned fury doesn’t prevent this material from feeling old hat. As he mentions more than once during his set, ‘we got bored of that after a few days’, seemingly aware of the sell-by date of jokes about loo-roll shortages.

A fresh perspective on the past two years comes whenever Helm finds a way to include the audience in his self-laceration, or when he breaks the stand-up formula with a trademark poem or song, placing his own anxieties at the story’s centre. In these little asides, there’s pathos and earnestness amid the anger. His love of the c-word (and we don’t mean covid) is rarely less than hilarious, but let’s hope he recovers from the past two years soon, or at least finds a more original way to discuss it. 

Pleasance Dome, until 28 August, 5.25pm.